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| When you drink a lot of water with your meals, the liquid dilutes the saliva in your mouth, the gastric juice in your stomach, and the digestive juices in the upper part of your intestines. Saliva is loaded with digestive enzymes. According to Dr. Mervyn Hardings," The best time for water drinking is from one to two hours after meals and up to 10 to 15 minutes before meals. Because we eliminate so much liquid through our kidneys, skin, lungs, and colon, we need to drink more than most of us do.... The digestive juices work best at normal body temperature, and if we drink ice water or other cold,(or very hot) beverages with our meals, this slows digestion until the stomach contents return to the right temperature." You need at least six, or better yet eight, glasses of water in between meals. Water is more than a thirst-quencher. It is the mainstream of your life... a solvent and dispersion medium for nutrients, electrolytes(minerals, mainly sodium and potassium), and waste products. Water makes up about 60 percent of your body weight because it is in all your tissues, inside the cells and around them. It is necessary for all your body activities. Some impurities gain entrance along with our food, drinks, and medicines, or are absorbed through the skin and inhaled in the air. These impurities and other wastes must be dissolved and carried away in the blood and lymph, which are mostly water. If they are not, they cause you to become very tired, get sick, or even die. You need plenty of water to continually flush every cell with a rapid circulating bath. We need water to dossolve the wastes throughout the body and carry them to the skin, the lungs, and the kidneys, which can get rid of them. An accumulation of wastes in the body can make you feel tired, weak, and possibly sleepy. A good drink of water or two can help your brain to be more alert. Even the gray matter of your brain is 85% water. About 93 percent of the blood is fluid so it can carry necessary substances to and from the cells. The oxygen from the air could not get through the thin walls of the air sacs in the lungs if it was not first dissolved in a thin layer of fluid. And if the walls of the air sacs were perfectly dry, the carbon dioxide in the blood could not get out through the lungs. You couldn't even blink your eyes if your eyes and the lids were really dry. While the glands that make the digestive juices secrete two to three gallons a day, they can't store this much water. So they make concentrated enzyme granules and then extract water from the bloodstream to add to them to make a juice of the right consistency, the way you make lemonade by adding water to a concentrate. When you work or play hard in summer, you notice the perspiration on your skin. This helps to control your temperature. Hikers, mountain climbers, and marathon runners find they tire less easily if they drink water along the way. This definately delays fatigue and helps to prevent leg cramps. Perhaps this is because water lubricates every part of your body and helps to protect your tissues from injury. It also makes your muscles, tendons, cartilage, and even your bones more flexible. Water often is the best thing to reach for in an imergency. If you sprain your ankle, place it in cold water immediately,and off and on during the first 24 hours. This helps to keep it from swelling and eases the pain. Or if you burn yourself, you can submerge the injured area in cold water at once. Again, the cold water keeps it from hurting so bad, stops tissue destruction, and speeds up recovery. A hot footbath is an excellent means of relieving a headache, because it dilates the blood vessels in your feet, and this draws the blood away from your head. A bath can do more than wash the dust and perspiration off your skin. It stimulates your circulation, which clears your brain, helps your digestion, and gets the white blood cells(germ-fighters) into circulation, thus building up your resistance to disease. Water is another one of the truly great Lifesavers ! |